Marquette Baking Company

Tomorrow is the last Thursday of October, so we will be baking Cornish Saffron Buns again.  It means I have to go in extra early so they are out of the oven before we turn it up for baguettes, but it’s worth it.  I love the fragrance of baking saffron and the buns are so wonderful for breakfast.

We are developing a rotation of special breads on Thursdays.  We bake Cornish Saffron Buns the last Thursday of each month, and Finnish Cardamom Bread the first.  In addition we started baking Irish Soda Bread on the second Thursday of October, and I plan to continue that.  That leaves the third Thursday to fill.  If you have any suggestions, let me know.  Something that represents the ethnic diversity of the UP would be ideal.

This week will be our last Apple Harvest bake of the year on Friday.  I’m planning to bake some extra this week, and if we  have any left over, I’ll freeze a few so I can enjoy them later into the fall.  Next Friday, we will be returning the Cranberry Pecan Bread to the rotation for November.  Last year we kept baking it until spring, but I’d like to start having a special bread every month.  I always enjoy having something special to look forward to (I’m already working on our 2009 Stollen recipe!), but I always hate to see them go.  Especially one as good as the Apple Harvest Bread.

Finally, this Saturday morning  is our last planned appearance at the Marquette Farmers Market.  Weather has been wet, windy and unpredictable throughout the month, but it is looking pretty good for this weekend.  Please stop down and see us.

Peter

We’ve been keeping our stand open at the Marquette Farmers Market and have been planning to continue doing so until the end of October.  The forecast for this week, however, caused me to call off this week’s market appearance.  Cold weather is one thing, but rain turning to snow, and maybe back to rain is not something we can deal with.  We’ll have the store open tomorrow.  It will be warm, and there will be plenty of hot coffee and tea.

We baked our penultimate batch of this year’s Apple Harvest Bread today.  It is definitely the best one so far.  The certified organic apples were provided by Sue Raker and Fred Galloway of Cloverland Apiary in Calumet.  After next Friday’s Apple Harvest Bread, we will be changing to Cranberry Pecan Bread for November and maybe throughout the winter.

Thanksgiving is the next big baking holiday coming up.  I remember that last year, it was when we first figured out how to make dinner rolls, and we made a lot of them.  Obviously, we’ll be doing rolls again.  But what else would you like us to do?  Please let us know if you have any suggestions.

Peter

We started baking our Apple Harvest Bread again last week.  We are baking it on Fridays instead of the Walnut Raisin and plan to continue doing so through October.  (We still bake the Walnut Raisin Bread on Wednesdays.)  Apple Harvest Bread is a naturally leavened bread that uses apple cider in a dough made partially with coarse stone ground whole wheat flour.  Then we add dried apple chunks to give it bursts of apple flavor in every slice.

Last year we used local apple cider, but used commercial dried organic apple for the chunks.  (I also saw in my notes that last year we used a little commercial yeast.)  This year we got enough cider (Certified Naturally Grown) to hopefully last the month from MarJayMik’s Acres.  And we are chopping and drying the apples ourselves.  Last week the apples were from Rock River Farms (Certified Naturally Grown) but that supply ran out.  This week we picked them ourselves from the backyard of one of our customers.  Another customer just brought in a portion of what we will need for next week from her backyard.  It’s a challenge to use locally produced ingredients, but it’s fun and means the products we create from them will have unique flavors and textures that change every week.